Marcus Wells, who just finished playing as the point guard for Winston-Salem State, talks about his overall game, his prospects for the future in pro basketball and what playing at WSSU has meant to him.

Dexter Strickland, who just finished up his college basketball career at North Carolina, talks about his potential pro prospects at the 2013 Portsmouth Invitational.

Larry Drew II, who just finished up his college basketball career at UCLA, talks with us about the 2013 Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, where prospective pro players gather to show off their abilities to scouts and coaches.

Brandon Davies, a forward who just finished his college basketball career at BYU, talks with us at the 2013 Portsmouth Invitational, where several potential NBA, overseas and D-League prospects get a chance to show their game in front of scouts.

By James Blackburn

Game Scouted: NC State @ Wake Forest

Wake Wins 86-84

Box Score

CJ Leslie (6’9”, F, JR)

Stats
18 min, 5-9 FG, 3-6 FT, 5 reb, 2 TO, 1 blk, 4 PF, 13 TP

Strengths
Despite playing just a little over half of the minutes he averages, Leslie made the most with his time on the floor and scored several key baskets for State. On the offensive side of the ball, Leslie was virtually unguardable in one-on-one situations. He is a big time above-the-rim athlete with good quickness and explosiveness for a PF. He uses his quick first step to drive around most defenders his size where he can score around the rim. He showed an array of mid-post moves using jab steps, spin moves, fakes, and sweeping through, to get by his defender and to the rim where he was able to score at a good rate because of his athleticism. At his best offensively in isolation situations in the mid-post and short corner areas where he can face the basket and has room and time to create offense for himself. Wake had to send the double team after scoring with single defender several times. Also showed a nice high half-hook late in the second half. Went 3-6 from FT line this game, made his first two. He does a nice job of using his legs on the line and shot has good arc.

Defensively, he has the tools to be good defender. Played last 10 minutes of game with 4 fouls without picking up 5th and even had a blocked shot in that stretch. Has potential to be good shot blocker at next level with his length and athleticism. Solid rebounder, especially on the defensive end, where he is averaging over 5 rebounds a game on that end of the floor.

Weaknesses
Defensively is where Leslie struggles the most. This is not because of lack of speed, quickness, or size, but is mostly due to lack of effort (low motor), strength, and positioning. On the games opening defensive series he didn’t close out on an open perimeter shot and let Moto have a wide open 18’ shot. Doesn’t seem to exert any more energy then he has to. Low motor on both ends. Not effective with out the ball in this game tonight. Poor screener. Needs to get lower in his defensive stance- got beat off the dribble several times this game partly because he was not low enough or didn’t stay in good defensive stance. He tends to fall for too many fakes and gets thrown off balance too easily. This contributed to his foul troubles tonight. He picked up his 4th foul with 17 minutes to go in the second half, after picking up his first 2 half way through the first half. He also tends to get into foul trouble because he is too often out of position and tries to recover late and go for the block or highlight defensive play. Was called for two goal tending violations in the second half- both were obvious and were not smart decisions on his part.
Offensively, he was excellent in the mid post area, but struggled to secure deep post position mainly because of poor lower body strength. He was getting pushed and bumped off line too easily in the paint and needs to get stronger. Ball handling needs to improve also, handle is too loose. Had a couple of TO’s early in the game and showed visible frustration.

Did not attempt any shots outside of 10 feet this game, besides FT’s. Is shooting 55% from the field so far for the season, which is mainly because most of those shots are coming in the paint. Has only attempted 4 three-pointers on the season and has made 1. He is shooting under 30% from beyond the arc for his career with just under 50 total attempts. He needs to improve his range and his outside shooting consistency. FT shooting needs to improve a bit as well. To his credit he is shooting 64% for the year , which is almost 5 percentage points better then last year. He missed 2 FT’s this game with under 30 seconds to with a chance to go up 1. His elbow sticks out to a degree which leads to inconsistent misses on both sides of the rim.

His motor needs to be higher. Body language was poor during most of game. Argued with officials on several calls and showed visible frustration at several points. Looked like he was coasting and going through motions at several points.

Overview
One of the worst games I have seen Leslie play, but he still managed to score in double figures and grab 5 rebounds in under 20 minutes of playing because of foul trouble. He did impress however with his performance in last 4 minutes of game…playing with 4 fouls during which he had several big baskets and rebounds.

When Leslie plays hard and with determination, he is one of top draft prospects in country. He has the tools, solid upside, and the offensive arsenal to contribute at next level as a PF. His athleticism, quickness for his position, and ability to face the basket in the mid-post will translate to the next level, and is part of the reason he is considered to be a first round pick in several mock drafts. It will be interesting to see if his motor and effort improve as the team enters conference play.

–

James Blackburn is the Director of Scouting for Basketball Elite and shares his reports with several NBA teams. You can follow James on Twitter right this second.

Photo Source: CBS

By Marcus Shockley

A recent article in the Charlotte Observer tells of some NBA scouts who think the Bobcats should trade whichever pick they have this year, as it’s expected to once again be in the lottery.

It’s an interesting phenomenon that has emerged ever since players starting entering the NBA draft right out of high school, which has now become the parade of ‘one-and-done’ players into the pros, that players who are projected as NBA superstars start playing games at the college level, their draft status often drops. Last season in AAU it was quite common to hear that Shabazz Muhammad was one of the best players on the planet even though he was still in high school, but now halfway through his freshman season, he’s considered to be ‘flawed and inexperienced’.

James Michael McAdoo of UNC has seen similar changes to his draft status, after a season where he’s struggled to establish himself as a consistent first option for his team. Nerlens Noel was incredibly hyped during the recruiting process before he committed to Kentucky, now still considered a lottery pick but not the lock that many had claimed.

As I open this month’s ESPN ‘Next’ magazine, in which they attempt to project who the next big stars will be in several sports, they have decided against selecting another high school phenom and went with Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving, who was a one-and-done college player for Duke, but is now in his second season in the pros. However, in the comments of the article, people pile in to tell ESPN that they have it wrong, and that the ‘next’ phenom is Andrew Wiggins, the star player for Huntington Prep in the class of 2013. One reader says ‘just watch a mixtape of Andrew Wiggins and he’ll blow your mind’.

I’m not saying Wiggins won’t be a pro and he’s a very talented high school player. But let’s wait on the accolades until he’s proven he can at least compete against collegiate talent.

This is part of the problem. I’m not sure if it’s the SportsCenter Top 10 influence, but people get fooled by highlights. They see a sixth grader scoring like crazy in a video and they immediately project the kid into the next Michael Jordan.

Is the 2013 NBA draft weak on talent? Not really, but what scouts are really saying is that it’s weak on potential superstars. Players like Cody Zeller and Otto Porter are considered NBA talent, but not “franchise” players. One issue I have with that is that those players hardly ever come along, no matter how much talent is supposedly in the draft. Another issue is that it seems like projecting superstardom is something scouts and fans love to do, but rarely get correct. As I write this, the 2014 mock NBA draft from NBADraft.net has the top 6 projected picks currently in high school. That’s become commonplace, but it’s also become commonplace that by the time those players are eligible for the draft, most of them will not be ranked that high.

—

Want to know more? You can follow Marcus Shockley on Twitter right this second.

At Basketball Elite, we always strive to be accurate over time. In a sports media landscape where it doesn’t matter what someone thought last week or five years ago but right this second (preferably on Twitter), there’s very little accountability for predictions or assessments.

Well we’re about to tackle that and make it a little harder for pundits and prognosticators to toss out their predictions and then change them later without ramifications.

We’ve scouted players for their NBA or pro prospects for some time, and this year will be no different, but this season our scouts will be specifically tracking the top predicted NBA draft prospects and several related mock drafts.

Here’s where it starts.

As of today (November 7, 2012), DraftXpress has their #1 projected pick as Shabazz Muhammad, a freshman SG at UCLA. Meanwhile, NBADraft.net has their #1 pick as Cody Zeller a 6’11″ PF/C playing for Indiana.

Now, who is the #1 pick, or the #2, #3 or #4 pick is kind of dependent on the upcoming season, the outcome of the draft lottery, and so on. So saying there are two different #1 projected picks isn’t really that odd.

In fact there’s only one player difference between the two sites’ top 5, where DraftXpress has international player Rudy Gobert going at #4 and NBADraft.net has North Texas big man Tony Mitchell going at #5.

So here’s what we’ll be doing. Our scouts will be watching all of the players in these mock drafts (and we may add a couple of others as well), and assessing how accurate their rankings might be as the season progresses. In addition, we will be tracking changes to the draft rankings and especially note when those changes are reflected across multiple sites. We also will be reviewing the mock drafts after the NBA draft of 2013 to determine who was the closest, who was the most accurate earliest, and so forth.

And of course, at Basketball Elite, we do something unique to scouting services; we assess the players after they are in the NBA, or after their playing career is over regardless of where they play, to see how accurate we were. In this case, we will be tracking everyone else’s predictions as well.

Oh, and by the way, ESPN’s mock draft has another #1 pick, Nerlens Noel of Kentucky. So who’s got the early correct prediction?

Comparing the Success of College Seniors to International Players drafted in 2nd round since 2000

Juan Carlos Navarro sits atop the list of good international NBA draft picks.

By James Blackburn

Notes About How This List Was Created

• Good pro means they played for 5 years or more in NBA and/or played/contributed significantly
• For draft years 2010-2011, I left off some Int’l and some seniors because there has not been enough time to evaluate them.
• A bad international player means he hasn’t played in NBA yet at all or hasn’t contributed, same with college senior. Or they played for a year or two, then they were out.
• 4-year guy means senior- no matter if they were a 4 or 5 year guy
• Some of my personal opinion is factored in as well about weather they are a good or bad pick- but my opinion is based mostly on the players stats, upside (if they are current pick- last 2 years), and how long played in NBA, if at all.

Results
Total Good Senior Picks: 51
Total Good International Picks: 17 (4 years of 1 good player picked and 3 years of 0 picks)
Total Bad Senior Picks: 82
Total Bad International Picks: 66

Out of all the picks that were graded (all were not, some players were considered a wash/even/not really good or bad), there were 133 college seniors drafted since 2000 in 2nd round that were graded by myself. 61% of these seniors picked were considered bad picks (may of not stayed long in league, if at all, or didn’t really contribute), leaving 39% of seniors drafted graded as a good pick. 83 international players were evaluated that were drafted in 2nd round of NBA draft since 2000. 79% of these players were considered bad picks, 21% were considered good.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a change with any group after 2005, which was the last year HS players could be drafted. Overall, the results give a slight edge to drafting college seniors over international players, with 39% having success over just 21% of players coming from Europe and overseas. But there are also more college seniors drafted 133 to just 83, so there is less room for error for international players. I will say this though, international players seem to be either star or bust (never even reaching the NBA/or America in that case), and very few in betweens, though there are a few. As with college seniors there seems to be more that fall into that middle category (neither star nor complete bust).

Last observation is that the best 2nd round senior picked in my opinion in last 10 years is probably a tie between Matt Barnes and Steve Blake, based on their years played in the NBA and their contributions on teams, including playoff teams. The best international player picked in my opinion was Luis Scola and Marc Gasol, who are both better players then the college seniors picked. Scola and Gasol are on the verge of being All-Star guys and are both major contributors for their respective teams. Its no accident or coincidence that Scola was a Spurs draft pick.

2000

Good Senior Picks (5)
1. Jake Voskuhl
2. Eddie House
3. Eduardo Najera
4. Brian Cardinal
5. Jason Hart

Good International Picks (1)
1. Marko Jaric

Bad Senior Picks (10)
2. Dan Langhi
3. AJ Guyton
4. Lavor Postell
5. Hanno Mottola
6. Chris Carrawell
7. Dan McClintock
8. Chris Porter
9. Sconnie Penn
10. Pete Micheal
11. Jaquay Walls

Bad International Picks (4)
1. Soumaila Samake
2. Olumide Oyedeji
3. Josip Sesar
4. Igor Rakocevic

2001

Good Senior Picks (4)
1. Brian Scalabrine
2. Loren Woods
3. Earl Watson
4. Jarron Collins

Good International Picks (0)

Bad Senior Picks (9)
5. Jeff Trepagnier
6. Damone Brown
7. Ken Johnson
8. Sean Lampley
9. Eric Chenowith
10. Ruben Boumtje Boumtje
11. Andre Hutson
12. Bryan Bracey
13. Alvin Jones

Bad International Picks (2)
1. Antonis Fotsis
2. Robertas Javtokas Lietuvos Rytas

2002

Good Senior Picks (6)
1. Dan Gadzuric
2. Matt Barnes
3. Lonny Baxter
4. Flip Murray
5. Darius Songaila
6. Rasual Butler

Good International Picks (2)
1. Juan Carlos Navarro
2. Luis Scola (Spurs Pick)

Bad Senior Picks (7)
1. Steve Logan
2. Robert Archibald
3. Vincent Yarbrough
4. Chris Owens
5. Jason Jennings
6. Tamar Slay
7. Corsley Edwards

Bad International Picks (5)
1. Milos Vujanic
2. Peter Fehse
3. Mario Kasun
4. Federico Kammerichs
5. Mladen Sekularac

2003

Good Senior Picks (8)
1. Jason Kapono
2. Luke Walton
3. Steve Blake
4. James Jones
5. Matt Bonner
6. Keith Bogans
7. Willie Green
8. Kyle Korver

Good International Picks (1)
1. Zaza Pachulia

Bad Senior Picks (4)
1. Travis Hansen
2. Derrick Zimmerman
3. Tommy Smith
4. Brandon Hunter

Bad International Picks (10)
1. Maciej Lampe
2. Sofoklis Schortsanitis
3. Szymon Szewczyk
4. Slavko Vranes
5. Sani Becirovic
6. Malick Badiane
7. Paccelis Morlende
8. Remon Van de Hare
9. Nedzad Sinanovic
10. Andreas Glyniadakis

2004

Good Senior Picks (2)
1. Royal Ivey
2. Chris Duhon

Good International Picks (1)
1. Anderson Varejão

Bad Senior Picks (13)
2. Jackson Vroman
3. Lionel Chalmers
4. Antonio Burks
5. Ricky Minard
6. Denard Robinson (Bobcats pick)
7. David Young
8. Justin Reed
9. Romain Sato- bad pick from Spurs- very surpising
10. Rickey Paulding
11. Luis Flores
12. Marcus Douhit
13. Blake Stepp
14. Rashad Wright

Bad International Picks (8)
1. Peter Ramos
2. Albert Miralles
3. Sergey Lishchuk
4. Ha Seung-Jin
5. Viktor Sanikidze
6. Vassilis Spanoulis
7. Christian Drejer
8. Sergei Karaulov-another bad Spurs pick

2005

Good Senior Picks (3)
1. Daniel Ewing
2. Ronny Turiaf
3. Ryan Gomes

Good International Picks (3)
1. Ersan Ilyasova
2. Roko Ukic
3. Marcin Gortat

Bad Senior Picks (4)
1. Robert Whaley
2. Orien Greene
3. Dijon Thompson
4. Lawrence Roberts

Bad International Picks (7)
1. Mickaël Gelabale
2. Erazem Lorbek
3. Uros Slokar
4. M. Andriuskevicius
5. Mile Ilic
6. Axel Hervelle
7. Cenk Akyol

2006

Good Senior Picks (3)
1. Steve Novak
2. Craig Smith
3. Ryan Hollins

Good International Picks(0)

Bad Senior Picks (6)
1. James White
2. Paul Davis
3. Bobby Jones
4. Denham Brown
5. Dee Brown
6. Hassan Adams

Bad International Picks (8)
1. Marcus Vinicius
2. Lior Eliyahu
3. V. Veremeenko
4. Yotam Halperin
5. Eden Bavic
6. Ejike Ugboaja
7. L. Mavrokefalidis
8. Damir Markota

2007

Good senior Picks (2)
1. Carl Landry
2. Aaron Gray

Good International Picks (2)
1. Kyrylo Fesenko
2. Marc Gasol

Bad Senior Picks (7)
1. Chris Richard
2. Derrick Byars
3. Adam Haluska
4. Reyshawn Terry
5. Stephane Lasme
6. Jared Jordan
7. Herbert Hill

Bad International Picks (6)
1. Stanko Barac
2. Renaldas Seibutis
3. Brad Newley
4. Sammy Mejia
5. Giorgos Printezis
6. Milovan Rakovic

2008

Good Senior Picks (3)
1. Sonny Weems
2. James Gist (Spurs Pick)
3. Joe Crawford

Good International Picks (4)
1. Nikola Pekovic
2. Omer Asik
3. Goran Dragic (Spurs pick)
4. Semih Erden

Bad Senior Picks (10)
1. Kyle Weaver
2. Sean Singletary
3. Patrick Ewing JR
4. Malik Hairston
5. Devon Hardin
6. Shan Foster
7. Darnell Jackson
8. Maarty Leunen
9. Sasha Kaun
10. Deron Williams

Bad International Picks (2)
1. Ante Tomic
2. Tadija Dragicevic

2009

Good Senior Picks (8)
1. Jeff Pendergraph
2. Dante Cunningham
3. Sam Young
4. Jon Brockman
5. Marcus Thorton
6. Danny Green
7. AJ Price
8. Lester Hudson

Good International Picks (2)
1. Jonas Jerebko
2. Nick Calathes- went to HS in USA

Bad Senior Picks (4)
1. Goran Suton
2. Jack McClinton
3. Robert Vaden
4. Robert Dozier

Bad International Picks (4)
1. Sergio Llull
2. Sergii Gladyr
3. Nando De Colo
4. Emir Preldzic

2010

Good Senior Picks (6)
1. Dexter Pitman
2. Andy Rautins
3. Landry Fields
4. Magnum Rolle
5. Luke Harangody
6. Jeremy Evans

Good International Picks (1)
1. Pape Sy

Bad Senior Picks (5)
1. Jarvis Varnado
2. Jerome Jordan
3. Stanley Robinson
4. Ryan Reid
5. Dwayne Collins

Bad International Picks (3)
1. Tibor Pleiss
2. Nemanja Bjelica
3. Paulo Prestes

2011

Good Senior Picks (1)
1. Chandler Parsons

Good International Picks (0)

Bad Senior Picks (3)
1. Justin Harper
2. Jon Diebler
3. Vernon Macklin

Bad International Picks (7)
1. Bojan Bogdanovic
2. Davis Bertans
3. Milan Macvan
4. Chukwudiebere Maduabum
5. Tanguy Ngombo
6. Adam Hanga
7. Ater Majok